Quick and dirty summary

Timing is crucial and this book doles out some practical advice on when to do things based on scientific studies. Biggest takeaway: Humans tend to do better in beginnings and endings and the slump in the middle is what to remedy and watch out for.

Notebook for
When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Pink, Daniel H.
Citation (APA): Pink, D. H. (2018). When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
INTRODUCTION: CAPTAIN TURNER’S DECISION
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Seconds, hours, and weeks are all human inventions. Only by marking them off, wrote historian Daniel Boorstin, “would mankind be liberated from the cyclical monotony of nature.”
PART ONE. THE DAY
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Positive affect—language revealing that tweeters felt active, engaged, and hopeful—generally rose in the morning, plummeted in the afternoon, and climbed back up again in the early evening.
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“sophisticated economic agents acting in real and highly incentivized settings are influenced by diurnal rhythms in the performance of their professional duties.”
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“[A]n important takeaway from our study for corporate executives is that communications with investors, and probably other critical managerial decisions and negotiations, should be conducted earlier in the day.”
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performance was generally strong in the beginning of the day, then worsened as the hours ticked by.13 The same pattern held for stereotypes. Researchers asked other participants to assess the guilt of a fictitious criminal defendant.
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So system 1 takes over. Automaticity and biases.
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First, our cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day. During the sixteen or so hours we’re awake, they change—often in a regular, foreseeable manner. We are smarter, faster, dimmer, slower, more creative, and less creative in some parts of the day than others. Second, these daily fluctuations are more extreme than we realize. “[T]he performance change between the daily high point and the daily low point can be equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol,” according to Russell Foster, a neuroscientist and chronobiologist at the University of Oxford.15 Other research has shown that time-of-day effects can explain 20 percent of the variance in human performance on cognitive undertakings.16 Third, how we do depends on what we’re doing. “Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from studies on the effects of time of day on performance,” says British psychologist Simon Folkard, “is that the best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task.”
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For most of us, those sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon.
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Alertness and energy levels, which climb in the morning and reach their apex around noon, tend to plummet during the afternoons.
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Students scored higher in the mornings than in the afternoons. Indeed, for every hour later in the day the tests were administered, scores fell a little more. The effects of later-in-the-day testing were similar to having parents with slightly lower incomes or less education—or missing two weeks of a school year.19 Timing wasn’t everything. But it was a big thing.
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For analytic problems, lack of inhibitory control is a bug. For insight problems, it’s a feature. Some have called this phenomenon the “inspiration paradox”—the idea that “innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best, at least with respect to our circadian rhythms.”
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So creative work in the late afternoons.
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I call time-outs like these “vigilance breaks”—brief pauses before high-stakes encounters to review instructions and guard against error.
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taking the same test after a twenty- to thirty-minute break leads to scores that are equivalent to students spending three additional weeks in the classroom and having somewhat wealthier and better-educated parents. And the benefits were the greatest for the lowest-performing students.
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longer school days can be justified, if they include an appropriate number of breaks.
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school accountability systems should control for the influence of external factors on test scores . . . a more straightforward approach would be to plan tests as closely after breaks as possible.”
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One problem with afternoons is that if we stick with a task too long, we lose sight of the goal we’re trying to achieve, a process known as “habituation.” Short breaks from a task can prevent habituation, help us maintain focus, and reactivate our commitment to a goal.
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frequent short breaks are more effective than occasional ones.
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High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. DeskTime never published the data in a peer-reviewed journal, so your mileage may vary. But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck. Even “micro-breaks” can be helpful.
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One study showed that hourly five-minute walking breaks boosted energy levels, sharpened focus, and “improved mood throughout the day and reduced feelings of fatigue in the late afternoon.” These “microbursts of activity,” as the researchers call them, were also more effective than a single thirty-minute walking break—so much so that the researchers suggest that organizations “introduce physically active breaks during the workday routine.”
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Social beats solo.
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much of the research on restorative breaks points toward the greater power of being with others, particularly when we’re free to choose with whom we spend the time.
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Outside beats inside.
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Nature breaks may replenish us the most.24 Being close to trees, plants, rivers, and streams is a powerful mental restorative, one whose potency most of us don’t appreciate.
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Fully detached beats semidetached.
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We can extend this to physical activity and working out. If you put too much pressure on yourself it isn't a break anymore. Get your priorities straight.
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Lunch is the most important meal of the day.
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Provided you can choose a relaxing place, who you're lunching with and not talk about work at all.
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One well-known NASA study, for instance, found that pilots who napped for up to forty minutes subsequently showed a 34 percent improvement in reaction time and a twofold increase in alertness.
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The ideal naps—those that combine effectiveness with efficiency—are far shorter, usually between ten and twenty minutes.
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Meditation is one of the most effective breaks—and micro-breaks—of all.
PART TWO. BEGINNINGS, ENDINGS, AND IN BETWEEN
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For somewhat older people, beginning a career in a weak economy can restrict opportunities and reduce earning power well into adulthood. Beginnings have a far greater impact than most of us understand. Beginnings, in fact, can matter to the end.
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chaos and complexity theorists have long known: In any dynamic system, the initial conditions have a huge influence over what happens to the inhabitants of that system.
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Each July, a fresh group of medical school graduates began their careers as physicians.
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“in counties containing teaching hospitals, fatal medication errors spiked by 10% in July and in no other month. In contrast, there was no July spike in counties without teaching hospitals.”
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FOUR TIPS FOR MAKING A FAST START IN A NEW JOB
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Begin before you begin.
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So as you think about your new role, don’t forget to see how it connects to the bigger picture. For one of the ultimate new jobs—becoming president of the United States—research has shown that one of the best predictors of presidential success is how early the transition began and how effectively it was handled.
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Let your results do the talking.
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A new job can be daunting because it requires establishing yourself in the organization’s hierarchy. Many individuals overcompensate for their initial nervousness and assert themselves too quickly and too soon. That can be counterproductive. Research from UCLA’s Corinne Bendersky suggests that over time extroverts lose status in groups.13 So, at the outset, concentrate on accomplishing a few meaningful achievements, and once you’ve gained status by demonstrating excellence, feel free to be more assertive.
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When you enter a new role, set up small “high-probability” targets and celebrate when you hit them. They’ll give you the motivation and energy to take on more daunting challenges further down the highway.
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Couples tend to be more satisfied with their marriages, and less likely to divorce, if they have more education before the wedding.
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Couples that had dated for more than three years were even less likely to split up once they exchanged vows.
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(Francis-Tan and Mialon also found that the more a couple spent on its wedding and any engagement ring, the more likely they were to divorce.)
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“[M]erely telling people they were slightly behind an opponent led them to exert more effort,” Berger and Pope write.
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Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones.
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Don’t break the chain (the Seinfeld technique).
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To maintain focus, he prints a calendar with all 365 days of the year. He marks off each day he writes with a big red X. “After a few days, you’ll have a chain,” he told software developer Brad Isaac. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
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Prioritize your top goals (the Buffett technique).
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First, he said, write down your top twenty-five goals for the rest of your life. Second, look at the list and circle your top five goals, those that are unquestionably your highest priority. That will give you two lists—one with your top five goals, the other with the next twenty. Third, immediately start planning how to achieve those top five goals. And the other twenty? Get rid of them. Avoid them at all costs. Don’t even look at them until you’ve achieved the top five, which might take a long time. Doing a few important things well is far more likely to propel you out of the slump than a dozen half-assed and half-finished projects are.
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A self-compassion letter operates like the converse corollary of the Golden Rule: It offers a way to treat yourself as you would others.
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What the end of the decade does seem to trigger, for good and for ill, is a reenergized pursuit of significance.
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In the early 1930s, Hull proposed what he called the “goal gradient hypothesis.”5 He built a long runway that he divided into equal sections. He placed food at every “finish line.” Then he sent rats down the runway and timed how fast they ran in each section. He found that “animals in traversing a maze will move at a progressively more rapid pace as the goal is approached.”
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At the beginning of a pursuit, we’re generally more motivated by how far we’ve progressed; at the end, we’re generally more energized by trying to close the small gap that remains.
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People with a gift certificate valid for two weeks are three times more likely to redeem it than people with the same gift certificate valid for two months.10 Negotiators with a deadline are far more likely to reach an agreement than those without a deadline—and that agreement comes disproportionately at the very end of the allotted time.11 Think of this phenomenon as a first cousin of the fresh start effect—the fast finish effect. When we near the end, we kick a little harder.
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as we close in on a finish line, having multiple ways to cross it can slow our progress.12 Deadlines, especially for creative tasks, can sometimes reduce intrinsic motivation and flatten creativity.
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“The suggestion that adding mildly pleasant years to a very positive life does not enhance, but decreases, perceptions of the quality of life is counterintuitive,” write social scientists Ed Diener, Derrick Wirtz, and Shigehiro Oishi. “We label this the James Dean Effect because a life that is short but intensely exciting, such as the storied life led by the actor James Dean, is seen as most positive.”
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Across multiple versions of the study, people assessed Jim’s morality based largely on how he behaved at the end of his life. Indeed, they evaluated a life with twenty-nine years of treachery and six months of goodness the same as a life with twenty-nine years of goodness and six months of treachery. “[P]eople are willing to override a relatively long period of one kind of behavior with a relatively short period of another kind just because it occurred at the end of one’s life.”22 This “end of life bias,” as the researchers call it, suggests that we believe people’s true selves are revealed at the end—even if their death is unexpected and the bulk of their lives evinced a far different self.
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So in all engagements, remember the peak end rule and try to leave with a good impression :) “All's well that ends well".
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Carstensen called her theory “socioemotional selectivity.” She argued that our perspective on time shapes the orientation of our lives and therefore the goals we pursue. When time is expansive and open-ended, as it is in acts one and two of our lives, we orient to the future and pursue “knowledge-related goals.” We form social networks that are wide and loose, hoping to gather information and forge relationships that can help us in the future.
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When time is constrained and limited, as it is in act three, we attune to the now.
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Moreover, what spurs editing isn’t aging per se, Carstensen found, but endings of any sort. For example, when she compared college seniors with new college students, students in their final year displayed the same kind of social-network pruning as their seventy-something grandparents. When people are about to switch jobs or move to a new city, they edit their immediate social networks because their time in that setting is ending. Even political transitions have this effect. In a study of people in Hong Kong four months before the territory’s handover from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, both young people and older folks narrowed their circles of friends.
PART THREE. SYNCHING AND THINKING
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(To be more democratic and let members choose what to sing, he says, would turn a concert into a “potluck dinner” rather than a three-star Michelin meal.)
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In chronobiology, those external cues are known as “zeitgebers” (German for “time giver”)—“environmental signals that can synchronize the circadian clock,” as Till Roenneberg puts it.6 Ancona’s thinking helped establish that groups also need zeitgebers. Sometimes that pacesetter is a single leader,
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Indeed, the evidence shows that groups generally attune to the pacing preferences of their highest-status members.
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For group timing, the boss is above, apart, and essential.
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Research by Alex Pentland at MIT “has shown that the more cohesive and communicative a team is—the more they chat and gossip—the more they get done.”
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The dabbawalas are not a corporation but a cooperative, which operates on a profit-sharing model that pays each wala in equal shares.*
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T]ouch increases cooperative behavior within groups, which in turn enables better group performance.” Touching is a form of synching, a primal way to indicate where you are and where you’re going.
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research by Bahar Tunçgenç and Emma Cohen of the University of Oxford has found that children who played a rhythmic, synchronized clap-and-tap game were more likely than children who played nonsynchronous games to later help their peers.
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In similar experiments, children who first played synchronous games were far more likely than others to say that if they were to come back for more activities they would be interested in playing with a child who wasn’t in their original group.
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It's human nature (through evolution) to be in sync. Though I don't think the regular workday is correct, maybe better approach is less working hours, private/public spaces, longer lunch (and nap) breaks but definitely for me not full remote. I don't believe.
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Operating in synch expands our openness to outsiders and makes us more likely to engage in “pro-social” behavior. In other words, coordinating makes us better people—and being better people makes us better coordinators.
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Do we have a clear boss—whether a person or some external standard—who engenders respect, whose role is unambiguous, and to whom everyone can direct their initial focus?
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Are we fostering a sense of belonging that enriches individual identity, deepens affiliation, and allows everyone to synchronize to the tribe?
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Are we activating the uplift—feeling good and doing good—that is necessary for a group to succeed?
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“Workplace social functions are less effective if initiated by the manager. What’s better are worker-established engagements set at times and places that are convenient for the team.”3 Organic rituals, not artificial ones, generate cohesion.
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“By recording ordinary moments today, one can make the present a ‘present’ for the future,” the researchers write.
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Argument for journaling.
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I used to believe in ignoring the waves of the day. Now I believe in surfing them.
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I used to believe in the value of happy endings. Now I believe that the power of endings rests not in their unmitigated sunniness but in their poignancy and meaning.
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I used to believe that timing was everything. Now I believe that everything is timing.